The Cage: The Hunt Part 14

Dane looked her up and down. "You? Onstage? The Kindred would probably mistake you for some sniveling little animal and try to shoot you. Too bad you don't weigh enough for any kind of record." He pulled out his yo-yo. "And keep your grubby hands off this. I know you've been trying to swipe it."

Pika's face fell. Her braid sagged over her shoulder, the tip slightly damp. Her eyes went bigger and bigger until she had to draw in a sharp sip of air to keep from crying.

Dane rolled his eyes. "I was kidding. Can't you take a joke?" He reluctantly pulled out his pocket square and handed it to her. "Listen. Give the feed supply room an extra scrub, the insides of the cabinets and floors and everything, and maybe I'll think about letting you play with the yo-yo tonight."

Her face lit up. "Yes, sir!" She giggled and darted off to the feed room.

Dane turned back to Lucky. "Got to give them a little hope, you know?" His voice was low, like they were old confidants. "It keeps them distracted."

"It keeps them miserable."

Dane folded his arms, leaning back on the cabinets, appraising Lucky carefully. "You know, when you first showed up, I thought, here's a guy like me, who understands the situation and can handle the truth. But I'm starting to think you're just as blind as Pika, easily distracted by toys."

Lucky fought the urge to tell Dane to screw off. It wasn't easy.

Dane crouched down, reaching out a hand to pet the zebra, but his fingers went against the hair's direction, and the zebra flinched. "So tell me what you need that's so important."

"It has to do with time."

"You want a wrist.w.a.tch? A clock?"

Lucky turned away abruptly before Dane could see how much he hated asking for another favor. He repacked the revival pods in the cabinet with his back to Dane. "Don't ask how I know this, but my birthday is in three days. I'm turning nineteen. And I'm on their throw-down-the-drecktube list, I can promise you that. I tried to escape from an enclosure. And I punched a guard once."

Dane appraised him with surprise. "I see. And you don't want to be dragged away from your pretty little songbird." Jealousy edged his words.

"It isn't about Cora." The zebra was almost revived now, and Lucky reached for the harness. "It's about not wanting to end up like Chicago."

"No one knows what happened to Chicago."

Lucky shuddered, imagining the charred body Leon had described. His hands started shaking as he slipped the harness over the zebra's head and led it to its cell.

Dane watched him work. "I'll be nineteen in just a matter of weeks, too, though the others don't know that."

Lucky closed the zebra's gate. "You've got nothing to worry about, I'm sure. The Kindred will probably make you a prince on Armstrong, given how much you cooperate." He wiped his hands off and looked at Dane. There was a cryptic expression on the boy's face.

"Converting human time to Kindred time isn't a simple feat," Dane explained. "It's complicated even for the Kindred. They have timekeepers tasked with converting time on different stations and different planets. Ros.h.i.+an is one of the few timekeepers on this station. He doesn't just convert it. He keeps all the records. I could ask him to change the birth date they have down for you. Just a little change, something believable-about to turn eighteen, instead of nineteen. He owes me a favor."

Lucky eyed him cautiously. "What will it cost me?"

A smile flickered over Dane's face. He jerked his head for Lucky to follow him into his cell, which he did, reluctantly. It was filled with trinkets and books, the nicest blankets, even a robe with monogrammed initials that weren't Dane's. Dane took down a cookie tin filled with pocket squares, and he pulled back the thick cloths and a few torn-out pieces of paper. Beneath were hundreds of tokens, carefully padded by the pocket squares to silence them.

"You didn't get all of those from mixing drinks," Lucky said.

Dane closed the tin, shaking his head. "The Kindred think of themselves as being above reproach, and most of them are-given their unique concept of morality. But every once in a while you find one who's willing to bend the rules. One whose morality is a bit more tarnished. A bit more human, you could say."

Lucky folded his arms. "You mean Ros.h.i.+an?"

Dane nodded. "You might be aware of the fact that on occasion he hunts all the way to the kill. A real kill. I look the other way. He pays well. You were onto something when you mentioned Armstrong. Only I don't want to be a prince." Dane's eyes gleamed. "I want to be king."

Lucky tossed a look toward the cell block to make sure no one else was overhearing this nonsense. Pika was banging away in the feed room, and other than that, it was quiet.

"I overhear the hosts and hostesses talking, sometimes," Dane continued. "They say that on Armstrong, money is everything. The more tokens you arrive with, the more power you have. And all of this"-he shook the tin-"is going to set me up well, but I need more than money to be a king."

Lucky clenched his fist so hard that his knuckles turned white. "Let me guess. You need subjects." Now the gift of the notebook was making sense-Dane was trying to ingratiate himself.

"Not subjects," Dane said. "a.s.sociates. Even with money, it won't be easy to set myself up as a leader right from the start, with no one watching my back. But if I had someone loyal, someone I could trust, someone others inherently trust too . . . Someone who could work his way into Armstrong's society and spread the word about how fair-minded and powerful I am."

Fair-minded? Powerful? Lucky had a hard time keeping a straight face.

In the cell opposite them, the zebra had lain down. It was unnatural for a hoofed animal to lie like that, unless it was sick. The whole place felt infected.

"I'm waiting for an answer," Dane said.

Lucky cursed under his breath. "You promise you can get Ros.h.i.+an to change my birthday?"

"Yes."

"Then do it," Lucky said reluctantly. "And in return, if we're s.h.i.+pped off to Armstrong, I promise to tell people there whatever you want me to tell them." He told himself it was an empty promise. His mind went to the carving that Chicago had made in the safari truck's dashboard: 30.1. Which meant there was an almost 70 percent chance Earth still existed. Not much to hold on to, but something.

He heard another giggle as Pika returned from the storerooms, and he started to go.

"Not just yet," Dane said, keeping his voice low. "Ros.h.i.+an's going to ask for a favor in return, and I can't spare any of my tokens."

Lucky dropped his voice even lower. "There's not much I can do from back here."

"Maybe," Dane said. "Maybe not. I think it all comes down to one question." His blue eyes darkened. "You said this wasn't about Cora. So exactly how close are you to our little blond songbird?"

22.

Cora "GOOD," Ca.s.sIAN SAID. "NOW raise them again, higher."

Cora let out a heavy breath, and the pair of dice fell to the table. They had been training almost every other day, and she'd had no idea how physically demanding levitation would be. At the start of their training, when it had been an effort just to nudge a die an inch across a table, she'd felt like her mind might rip in two. Now she yearned to go back to that simple dull headache.

Ca.s.sian reset the dice. The sounds of jazz music and clinking gla.s.ses filtered through the wooden screens of the alcove, distracting her, but not as much as her worries over Lucky. His birthday was in two days now.

She tried to put Lucky out of her mind and focus on Ca.s.sian's dice. By her count, the Gauntlet was just days away from reaching the station. Then she would have three more days while the docking procedure happened. Six days in all-not much time. Were the other candidates, the Scoates and Conmarines and Temporals, desperately preparing like she was?

"Try it again," Ca.s.sian repeated. "Higher. You must reach twelve inches and hold it there for thirty seconds before you will be ready."

"I know. I just need to catch my breath."

Ca.s.sian's eyes flickered toward the screen. His hands kept flexing and unflexing.

"What's wrong?" she whispered.

He didn't answer at first, but then he lowered his voice. "I have been debating whether I should tell you something."

She raised an eyebrow.

He glanced in agitation toward the screen. "POD30.1. I have been looking into the algorithm's prediction records. Usually they are stored in a database accessible to all Kindred with level-five and higher clearance. But the particular results regarding Earth have been flagged with a level-twenty clearance. I cannot access them. Only delegates can."

"Fian's a delegate."

"Yes, and he has already reviewed the record at my request." He blinked a few times too many. "There were . . . irregularities. The time stamp was off. Someone modified the results. It is possible-though not definitive-that Chicago could have overheard talk of this on a safari."

"So it's true?" She felt her eyes widening. "They lied about Earth being gone?"

"We know only that the record was tampered with. It proves nothing."

But it could prove everything, she thought.

"Why would the Council tamper with it?"

"They fear humanity is at the precipice of evolution. The Council does not wish to compete with another intelligent species. But if Earth were gone, they would not have to deal with the future of humanity. Only with the handful of humans they currently have in captivity, such as yourself. Easily controllable-so they a.s.sume."

Her heart pounded. It was incredible what even this small sliver of hope could do to her morale. She pinched her eyebrows together and concentrated again on the dice. It was easiest if she let her mind probe the dice first, until she could wrap her thoughts around one as easily as if it were her own fingers moving them. She set her sights on the closest die, urging it into a wobble, then a spiral, and lifting it shakily, inch by inch, with the force of her mind until it hovered six inches. As hard as she concentrated, she couldn't get it to rise any higher.

"Mind reading," a voice whispered in her ear. "The three little mice cheat with cheese, not with crumbs."

Distracted, Cora let the die fall.

Anya was trying to communicate with her again, but as before, the words only came in nonsensical pieces that she could barely st.i.tch together. Mind reading? Cheese? She had to get Anya out of the Temple soon, so they could speak face-to-face.

Ca.s.sian frowned. "If your head is hurting, we should stop for the day."

She glanced at him cautiously. His face was calm-he hadn't heard Anya's voice.

"No, it isn't the training," Cora covered quickly. "I just didn't sleep well." That, at least, was true-tossing all night worrying about Lucky. "I . . . had bad dreams. They were about the girl you took me to see in the Temple menagerie. The dangerous one. Anya, wasn't that her name? I dreamed she had escaped and she came here and . . . and killed all of us. I can't get it out of my mind. Could we go to see her again, just so I can rea.s.sure myself? I'm sure it would make my head hurt a lot less."

Ca.s.sian's face remained a frustratingly impa.s.sive mask, even uncloaked. "That is impossible."

"I don't see what the problem is," she pressed. "You took me there before."

He removed a small metal tag from his pocket. "When we use these temporary removal pa.s.ses to get humans out of their enclosures, the activity is logged. It is not worth the risk of the Council seeing the log and growing even more suspicious than they already are. Wait until after the Gauntlet. If you win, you can see her whenever you like."

His voice was curt as he reset the dice.

She leaned forward. "I need to go now. Before the Gauntlet. Surely there must be some other way we could get there, without using the pa.s.ses. There has to be a service entrance or something. The Council would never have to know."

"No."

"But there must be a backstage area, right? Some other way to reach her?" Cora realized her voice was growing a little desperate, as Ca.s.sian stopped arranging the dice. His head turned slowly. Even uncloaked, his eyes were dark.

"Why are you so concerned with Anya?"

"Like I said," she replied, treading carefully, "because of the nightmare."

He studied her for a long time. He was uncloaked, so he couldn't possibly see into her mind, and yet she wondered if her plan to cheat was written all over her face. She grabbed a die and gave an exaggerated sigh. "Forget it. But I'm tired of dice and cards. Can't we work on something that isn't telekinesis?" She tapped the die anxiously against the table. "The Gauntlet might test me on mind reading too, and we haven't even started."

Ca.s.sian kept his eyes on her. She could feel him trying to unravel whatever was going on in her head. His fingers toyed with the die, just as hers did. It read 6. He turned it again: 3. For a second, she wondered what it would be like to read his mind. Control it, even. What would she have him do? Bow down to her. Sing and dance on command. Or maybe-just maybe-place his bare palm over hers again, so she could feel that flush of raw electricity.

She felt her face burning, and looked away.

"There is a logical progression to these training modules," he said measuredly. "First you master nudging the dice. Then levitate them. Then we move on to mind reading. This process is how we will prove your higher intelligence: through measurable, doc.u.mentable results. Unless you have other reasons for wanting to skip ahead?"

She bit the inside of her cheek. "No. Of course not."

He reached out as if to set his hand over hers, and for a second her cheeks flamed again, desires she could barely admit suddenly coming true. But he only took the die from her to keep her from tapping it so neurotically.

"You are anxious," he said softly.

"I just . . ." She looked away. "You're right. I do want to skip ahead for a reason that has nothing to do with the Gauntlet." She took a deep breath. She'd known for a few years that both her parents were having affairs long before the divorce, but her mother was far better at lying about it. Right before her mother told her father a lie, she would tilt her head down and let her hair fall in her eyes, and Cora did the same thing now. "I feel at such a disadvantage. You know every last thing about me. You watched me on Earth. You know about my time in Bay Pines, and you know about personal memories, like my dog, and my parents' divorce. There's an imbalance between us that I can't get past. You can look into my head anytime you're cloaked, but to me, yours is always closed off."

His hand rested so close to hers. An inch, and they would be touching. "This is what your agitation is about? You wish to see into my mind?" There was a trace of curiosity in his voice.

For the briefest moment, she hated herself for the lie.

"Of course." She scooted to the bench next to his, so that their bodies were only inches apart. "The Gauntlet isn't just about gaining new abilities. It's about proving we are truly equal. And how can we be equal when I'm the one trapped here, and you can leave at any time?"

The storm clouds in his eyes were moving, slowly, across his dark irises. "I cannot change that," he said. "Until we prove humanity's intelligence, you and all humans will always be caged."

"I know," she said softly. "But this one thing-this you can change."

His fingers returned to turning the die: 2, then 4. Faster and faster, though his face remained impa.s.sive.

"I want to know you," she whispered, "the same way you know me."

The die in his hand abruptly stopped.

Cora's heartbeat sped, even though she didn't want it to. It was undeniable, this thing between them. Always there, pulsing just under the surface. His hand was so close. So achingly close.

"Cora." In the privacy of the alcove, he could kiss her and no one would know. He wanted to. Badly. She didn't need to be psychic to know that.

A knock came on the wooden screen.

Cora jerked upright, heart racing. Through the screen, she could just make out the familiar slope of Dane's shoulders.

Ca.s.sian straightened immediately. "Enter."

Dane slid open the screen. If he found anything odd about the two of them sitting so close, dice and cards untouched on the table, he didn't even blink.